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Review: Warp

Warp is the first title in the House Party promotion and was developed by Trapdoor Entertainment. It is a stealth action puzzle game that combines the best traits of some classic franchises. You will be playing as the cute little alien Zero; he has been captured by scientists and taken to an underwater laboratory for experimentation. Zero awakens and realizes he needs to escape, that is where you come in as you help him on his quest to retrieve what was stolen from him and find the alien that guides him via a telepathic link.

Pros:

Premise: Warp takes an interesting approach to the puzzle genre by combining it with action and stealth. If you can’t figure out the best path to get past some guards you can always teleport into them and make them explode. If you don’t want a death on your hands, you can teleport in to daze them or even shake just a little so the other guards get suspicious and blast them for you. There isn’t just one way to complete Warp and that is the best part.

Who’s Footprints Are These? : Zero has a few different warping abilities that range from teleporting through wall or inside people, projecting an inanimate clone of him, and swapping places with a solid object of similar weight and size. All of these different warping abilities leave the guards and scientists of the game wondering what is happening but if you drop the ball and let them catch wind of you, don’t think for a second that they won’t blast you. The stealth in the game is one of my favorite aspects gave me a nostalgic feeling of the character Solid Snake.

Humor and Gore: Some of the lines the enemies say will absolutely put a smile on your face. If for some reason the witty repertoire doesn’t get you, the first time you warp inside someone, expand their body, and paint the walls with their crimson colored insides, surely will. Both of the previously mentioned things and the fact that you can make the guards run all around a room and even shoot each other with your abilities makes for some fun filled entertainment.

Zero a zero no more: While Zero does start off as kind of puny, and only climbs a little up the food chain after getting his first ability; he does become a force to be reckoned with. As you progress through the game you will have to search for the abilities the scientists stole from you, and once you find them you can upgrade them. If Zero has all of his abilities he is already a deadly force, but if you collect enough grubs you can upgrade him even more. You can turn his clone into a mine, make him warp faster, or even locate other grubs with ease. All of these things combined make for one menacing extra-terrestrial.

Challenges: These are a way to compete against friends via leaderboards and earn more grubs to upgrade your abilities. These are similar to the challenge missions in Metal Gear where you will have to use your warping abilities to complete certain objectives as quick as possible. Earning gold medals is quite difficult and these challenges add some replay-ability to the game. They can be unlocked via terminals in the story and once played once can be access from the main menu.

Cons:

Loading Screens: Warp’s only downfall is its loading screens and the lengthily. If you die in the story or challenges or need to restart a challenge, you will be met with a loading screen. While the animation of Zero on the loading screen is cute, once you see it quite a few times it becomes bothersome. If there was a way to release an update to decrease the time of the loading screens it would be a great relief.

In Conclusion:

Trapdoor Entertainment brought some new life to the puzzle genre by combining it with stealth and action. Zero is a fun new character to represent the downloadable market with all his crazy warping abilities. They took a new concept and made a solid and entertaining game out of it that I would recommend to fans of puzzle games and the classic Metal Gear style stealth adventures. For the price of 800 MSP I could easily see Warp and Zero teleporting into our hearts and the top of the charts.